Dawn Steel

Dawn Leslie Steel (August 19, 1946 – December 20, 1997) was an American film studio executive and producer. She was one of the first women to run a major Hollywood film studio, rising through the ranks of merchandising and production to head Columbia Pictures in 1987. Steel was born to a Jewish family[5] in the Bronx, New York to Nathan "Nat" Steel (born Spielberg), a zipper salesman to the military and semi-professional weight lifter called the "Man of Steel," and Lillian Steel (née Tarlow), a businesswoman. Lillian Tarlo Steel, Dawn's mother, died from lung cancer at age 55. She was the daughter of Nathan and Rebecca Tarlo, Polish immigrants. She had two brothers named Abraham and Paul. Their name became spelled T-A-R-L-O-W when Abraham joined the U.S. military during World War I. Paul and Abraham's children reside in NYC and Georgia, while Lillian's children live in California. Dawn grew up in Manhattan and in Great Neck, New York, according to her autobiography. Her brother Larry Steel was her only sibling. Both of her parents were of Russian-Jewish descent. When she was nine years old, Steel's father suffered a nervous breakdown, so her mother was the family's sole support. Steel attended the School of Business Administration at Boston University from 1964 to 1965, but left due to financial problems. She attended New York University from 1966 to 1967, studying marketing, but did not graduate. In 1968, Steel worked as a sportswriter for Major League Baseball Digest and the NFL in New York. In 1968, after starting out as a secretary, Steel became merchandising director for Penthouse. In 1975, she founded a merchandising company that produced novelty items such as designer logo toilet paper called Oh Dawn! Inc. One of the products she created was Gucci-logo embellished toilet paper. Within months the Gucci family sued Steel for trademark infringement. Steel hired attorney Sid Davidoff, a former top aide to Mayor John Lindsay. The case was in the news as "toilet paper caper" and was the subject of an editorial cartoon. The case was settled out of court. In 1978, Steel moved to Los Angeles, working as a merchandising consultant for Playboy. In 1978, Steel sold her interest in the Oh Dawn! merchandising business to her ex-husband and asked Davidoff to place a call to Hollywood. Davidoff made an introduction to Richard Weston, who ran Paramount Pictures' merchandising unit. In 1978, Steel joined Paramount Pictures as Director of Merchandising and Licensing, where she planned marketing tie-ins for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. She was promoted to vice president, and then vice president of production in 1980 and senior vice president of production in 1983. She was a protégé of Barry Diller, the CEO of Paramount at the time. While at Paramount, Steel's support for Flashdance (1983) and the movie's massive success helped her secure the position of president of production for the studio in 1985. She also oversaw Top Gun (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987), and The Accused (1988), among others. Steel was the second woman to head a major film production department, after Sherry Lansing at Twentieth-Century Fox. Steel became president of Columbia Pictures in 1987. She was the first female studio head. The first film she approved as president was Casualties of War; Pauline Kael said that "whatever else [Steel] does, she should be honored for that decision, because twenty years later this is still risky material." Under her tenure, the studio also released When Harry Met Sally... which had been developed and produced independently by Castle Rock productions. Steel's brief two-year tenure was marked by continued turmoil and losses, continuing a string of bad news begun under David Puttnam before her appointment. She was asked to leave the studio in 1989 and shortly thereafter Coca-Cola spun off the studio and exited the movie business; Columbia was thereafter sold to Sony Corporation of Japan. She resigned from this position on January 8, 1990.